My time seems to vanish before I know it, and I am sure I am not alone when I say this.

Yesterday I spent a good half a day sat at my computer. I of course had to jump off to sort the washing out, the kids, the dogs, make myself a few cups of tea and eat.

During that time, I did manage to edit eleven chapters of my second book. Which I am hoping to have published at the end of March. Fingers crossed. I am also re-writing book 3, as sadly due to a mishap with my memory stick, it got wiped and my first draft went with it. If I had only backed it up a few times as I would normally do, everything would have been fine. Sadly, that was not the case. I tried everything to retrieve the corrupt files, but nothing worked.

So now, between editing, writing a short story for another charity book, I am writing book 3. I am also debating on getting another series out there now, a series of 5 books. They will be novellas. I have the first book almost done, outlined I mean and a few chapters done. I started to write this for Nanowrimo. Which I love to do, but not sure I will be able to keep doing it every year, time will tell.

My first year that I attempted to do it, I decided three days after the starting date. Which was fine, I could catch up, three days was nothing. So I set about writing my outline, and as I had decided to do an Adult Romance book, I found that I enjoyed writing in that genre just as much as my YA/New Adult genre. So Marriage Proposal was written. First daft anyway. It now sits in my files ready to be edited at some point for publishing. I loved the storyline, a single woman wanting a baby and decides it is time she made it happen. She has three choices, a one night stand, a friend or a donor. As the story unfolds there are a few twists and turns for Zoe to overcome.

My second year, I chose another adult book. This time, the book was based on a woman who again is single, but is set up on a blind date, with a guy she would never ever have dated. And the date is the worst she has ever experienced, and not only that, he is short, and well just not her type, but he grows on her, and the more time she spends with him, the more she finds she likes him. Until she meets the brother, and one kiss shared between them, has her head in turmoil, and she is then Torn between two brothers. Which one wins her heart? Well when its edited and published you will just have to wait and find out.

This was also the first year I attempted to write two books and failed....the second book brings me back to the five book series I referred to earlier. Right now its called Grace Jones, but I am having to play around with her last name. I have no ideas right now, but Grace, is a little lie Ugly Betty, black hair, glasses, braces the works. And to top it all of, the poor girl moves to the town a few weeks before starting high school, and she knows no-one. She is a loner, and well living in the house on the hill does not help. Not that the story will involve any ghosts whatsoever. It will be about her journey through high school.

My third year, I wrote Dream World, Book 3, the lost file, not the title, I actually no longer have the book. I had wrote it in one POV, and that is of the girl known as Karen Langley. The book will be titled, Mean Girls, and the story follows her at college. I will say no more...hee hee, spoilers....

Has it only been a few days since I last updated. The days seem to pass by so fast. As a mother who works part time, my time is spread thin.

I had every intention to edit as much as I could on my last day off. Sadly, I did not get very far at all. I managed two chapters. I plan to fit in my editing when I can. I plan to print the novel and edit on paper after this edit.

Some authors edit this way, some prefer to edit on the computer. I used to edit always on the printed version. Then the cost of paper and ink, well that had me editing on the computer. Until my book was published, and dare I say it, well it needed a little more editing before it went live. So, with the proof copy in hand. I set about editing in the book. Writing in pencil, notes and scribbling out sentences that I wanted to remove, or where I had said the same thing twice. I must admit I found it so much easier to edit, and not miss anything. I have found that one of my bad habits and yes I may have one or two. I know when I read it back, that I miss words. How when I type it up, guess my brain is quicker than my typing.

A fantastic piece of software I love to use, has to be my natural reader. I started with the free version, and yes the voice is a tad robotic. (The program reads your work back to you.) It did also finds words I had used wrong, or misspelled, and on so many edits I had missed them. For example, the word image, should have read imagine. Just a few letters missing, made a huge difference.

My other favourite, just has to be Dragon, naturally speaking. You talk, it types. As much as I love it for writing, I do tend to more than anything, use it to type up hand written work. I guess getting used to saying what you want out loud, is something I am still getting the hang out. Besides it is rare that I am alone in the house. Can you imagine the look on my children's faces if I did a whole chapter of one of my novels. So for now it works the way I use them.

If you have any software you use, and want to share it, what it is, why you love it. Leave a comment...

I have spent many hours, writing, re-writing, editing, and bugging dear friends to read my work. I know family and friends were fed up with hearing about my writing. I was sure they thought it was just a hobby. I wanted to prove them wrong, that it was more than that. I could make it. I may have made some mistakes on the way, but who doesn't. My main goal as an author is to be read, and grow a fan base, and go from there.

So with that in mind, I found a site to share my work on, and yes it meant spending a little bit of money, but at the time it was worth every penny. Besides I had paid for two years and planned to make good use of it. And as soon as I added my first chapters, within a few hours I had my first three reviews. (Fanstory).

The site is for authors as well as readers, and the way it works, or worked back when I was a member, you read and reviewed each others. Of course, I felt like, how can I review other peoples work, I was not an expert. My grammar skills were not great, and well what could I really do to help them improve, when I had so much to learn myself. However, it was actually good for me. What I could was, state if the plot worked, the characters, those sort of things. Was there enough descriptions, or too much. Little things like that, and the site for me, helped me with my confidence in my own skills.

If I look back at what I so eagerly posted, I can see just how much I have improved. It has been a journey, a learning journey. Which to this day, continues.

Some authors may disagree with putting your work on websites like the ones I will list below. For me, it was just what I needed, and making new friends on these sites, helped me in many ways. Finding someone to talk about writing , has to be the biggest bonus ever. I have made some very wonderful friends on these sites. One other place I have made friends has to be the biggest social network site. Of course, we all know it well. I set up a profile, just for my writing, and thanks to Facebook, I have a new circle of friends, all around the world.

The websites that I feel are a good place to post your work for reviewing, I will add below. Everyone is different, but I found these ones good. If I have missed any, please feel free to add your links to them.